Ice Islands

By Humphrey Hawksley

On an inhospitable frozen island, Rake Ozenna must gain the trust of a young woman fleeing a Japanese crime empire and caught in the crosshairs of the Russian government.

“Another outstanding geopolitical thriller in Hawksley’s excellent Rake Ozenna series . . . carefully researched, action-packed, and suspenseful” –Booklist Starred Review

Major Rake Ozenna's mission is simple: gain access to the Kato family - Japan's most dangerous crime empire.

But when the secret son of the Russian leader is executed and Rake's target, Sara Kato, is implicated in the murder, a political crisis between Russia, Japan and the US is set in motion.

As Rake learns the true extent of their deadly plans, he must draw on every ounce of his training to succeed. Because if he fails, it won't just be his life that will be lost . . . the consequences will be global.

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“Brass-knuckled international intrigue for readers who still pine for the world of James Bond” –Kirkus Reviews on Man on Fire

“Everything readers want in a political thriller” –Library Journal on Man on Edge

“Authentic settings, non-stop action, backstabbing villains, and rough justice” –Steve Berry on Man on Ice

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severn House
• Release date: Aug 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781448307500

Humphrey Hawksley

HUMPHREY HAWKSLEY is a leading BBC foreign correspondent, author and commentator on world affairs, reporting for both radio and television news, for BBC2’s Newsnight and for the World Service. He has worked for the Corporation since 1983 and has been posted to Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Beijing. It was in China that Hawksley, with Financial Times correspondent Simon Holberton, wrote Dragon Strike. Published in 1997, it was the first in an internationally acclaimed and bestselling ‘future history’ trilogy, which would include Dragon Fire and The Third World War, all published by Pan Macmillan. Now based in London, Humphrey Hawksley continues to report regularly on the War on Terror and on Iraq from the Middle East, Washington and the wider developing world.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Tokyo

She was out, clear of the death house. She had to get away. Completely. Long distance. Free from dread. From guilt. From paralyzing fear. An airport. Another country. Sara Kato rode in the back of one of the family sedans, her brother Michio beside her, window down, city noise in her ears and drizzle splattering on her face. In the bag strapped around her shoulder was her passport, credit cards, vaccination certificates, a few hundred euros and her phone from London which worked in Japan. She still had the American soldier’s phone in her jeans pocket.

Shibuya’s lights shone around her, massive futuristic images of gadgets, celebrities, fashion wrapped around skyscrapers. Umbrellas bobbed up and down as people ducked around each other in the rain. It would be so easy to slip away, vanish in the crowds. Easy, if she did it right.

‘Why don’t we walk?’ she suggested. ‘And I need an ATM to get some yen. I only have euros.’

‘There you are.’ Michio peeled off a wad. ‘That’ll keep you going.’

‘Thank you, but no.’ Sara lay a hand on his arm, trying to hide a repulsive shiver on showing any affection. ‘I need to do something normal, be on the street, go to an ATM, get some money, feel people around me, feel cold.’ After the horror in that stifling house, she made it sound believable. First step, out of the car. Second step, run as fast as she could.

‘Of course. I wasn’t thinking.’ He squeezed her hand and instructed the driver to pull up. ‘We’ll get out here. The rain, getting a bit wet doesn’t worry you?’

‘It’ll be refreshing.’ She took her hand off his arm.

The driver turned into a narrow road and stopped behind a green taxi. Sara pulled the handle to open her door. It was locked. The driver glanced at Michio who gave a single nod. There was a click. The door opened. She gripped her bag’s shoulder strap and stepped out. She drew in the bustle and buzz, eyes scanning on how best to escape. ‘There’s an ATM.’ Michio pointed to a bank of three along the sidewalk, green and yellow lights glowing from their screens.

She saw two men ahead. She turned. Another two behind. A motorcyclist, engine running, foot on the sidewalk, looked toward her. They would be trained to stop her going anywhere. She needed to slow down and work out how to get past them.

‘They’re with us?’ she asked.

‘Sorry.’ Michio shrugged. ‘If you’re a Kato in this city, you can’t just go for a walk.’ He took her arm. ‘Ignore them. Come. Get your money.’

She stood in front of the cash machine, the cordon around her, taking her time, checking her PIN, her balance. Michio was a man she adored more than any other, her brother whom she trusted completely. What she had just seen shook her to the core, even though it wasn’t against her. Michio was picking up as if nothing had happened, which made it worse, more confusing. She craved to understand him.

She concealed trembling, fought hard against a choking sense of more despair. She withdrew 50,000 yen. Turning to Michio, she forced a smile, ‘Now, at least I can buy my big brother a drink.’

Michio led her into a tiny, winding street with poky counter bars and sushi places crammed next to each other. The same six or seven men trailed or went ahead of them. They were recognized. Bar owners bowed or raised hands in greeting. Not just to Michio, also to the men with him. They moved from place to place. One moment they were in an old red-light district of hodgepodge narrow streets. The next they were guests of honor at a bar decked out like a film set, with cameras, spotlights, fake sand dunes and thumping music.

She let Michio talk. Justifying. Explaining. Most in Japanese. Some in English. About being Japanese. Bloodlines, Family.

They kept moving from place to place, sometimes on foot to a bar or café nearby, a couple of times, a short journey by car. She lost track of where they were. She had never known Tokyo well, hadn’t lived here since she was ten. The security cordon stayed. Even in the rest room, a woman appeared from nowhere to keep watch.

She tried to leave. They were perched on stools in a tiny counter bar, Michio discussing with the owner the outcome of the Pacific War. Sara touched him warmly on the shoulder and spoke in English, ‘I’m beat, Michio. We both know why I can’t go back to the house. You stay. I’ll check into a hotel.’

Michio laid a hand on hers, gently but firmly. ‘It’s late. We’re all tired. There’s a hotel just around the corner.’

She was terrified to show anger. To survive, she had to show she supported him in his evil. She felt suffocation. Her mind didn’t know where to go. Stop, she wanted to scream. Stop controlling me. Stop giving me surprises. Stop being so bloody nice.

‘Let me treat you. Just tonight.’ He smiled at her.

‘I need to—’

‘I know,’ interrupted Michio. ‘You need to be by yourself. You will be, and early tomorrow morning I want to show you something about our family.’

She didn’t want to hear anything more about her family. Her father had banished her from Japan when she was just ten. He was a monster. She knew the Kato family were stinking rich. She had never asked details because she had never felt part of them. She had been smart enough to keep her distance, but not smart enough to stay completely away. She had come back because she loved Michio, her elder brother and her protector. Everyone needs family. Now, she had seen that Michio was a monster, too.

‘Our businesses are much more than just hotels, golf clubs, airlines and karaoke joints,’ Michio was saying. ‘We help people all around the world. I want you to see that, then you can decide what you want to do. Let’s all get a good night’s sleep.’

Her hotel room was vast with a huge bed, a sunken bath, a rain shower and windows with a surround view of the city. Sara walked around and around, sinking her bare feet into the thick yellow carpet. Michio’s men were outside the door. Her brother had taken the room next door with an adjoining door to hers. She knelt and lowered her head to the carpet like in prayer. She let her mind go blank for five seconds, ten, more, until she realized that Michio could be watching her every move. She tried to rid herself of the thought that he would harm her. She couldn’t. She had seen his eyes, his determination, the way he wiped blood off his hand. She pushed herself up, went to the bed and, fully clothed, enveloped in exhaustion, she crawled under the covers, pulling the sheet over her head.

She pulled the American’s phone from her jeans pocket and scrolled through to see how it worked. She recognized neither iPhone nor Android technology. It was something different. Surely, they could pinpoint where she was. The American had made her register a thumbprint. It worked. She remembered the four-number pass code. The screen lit. Her heart pounded as she typed out a message in capitals. HELP. She thought a moment on how to make it clearer so it didn’t get lost in some bullshit American bureaucracy. She deleted it, rewrote the message and sent it. R-A-K-E O-Z-E-N-N-A. H-E-L-P M-E P-L-E-A-S-E.

ONE

One month earlier

Douro Valley, Portugal

‘Slow,’ said Rake. Their headlights swept across vines on both sides of the driveway.

‘You worry too much, Ozenna.’ Jo Duarte turned impatiently from the front seat. ‘We’re here. This is it.’

Duarte had come with the job, a freelance agent hired through Portugal’s Security Intelligence Service, its counterpart to the CIA. Rake had been assured Duarte was the best for the job. He knew the players and was raised in the area.

Rake was in Portugal because one of its colonies used to be Macau, an enclave on the southern Chinese coast. Now run by China, Macau was filled with casinos and dirty money. A trail of Asian organized crime that Rake picked up there had led him to the vineyard in the Douro Valley above the northern city of Porto.

A Japanese businessman, who claimed to be close to the North Korean dictatorship, wanted to set up a vineyard in there. He was a pitiful character, a chancer who had stepped on the wrong side of America’s anti-corruption laws. In exchange for dropping charges, the Japanese was to give Rake a channel into the network of a far more dangerous and disciplined player, Michio Kato, heir to one of Japan’s most dominant crime families. Michio had gone off radar more than a year, and Rake needed to find him.

‘Stop,’ Rake instructed. They were two hundred yards from the sweeping gravel driveway where there was a white Mercedes SUV. To the left was an open carport with vehicles. ‘Cut the lights.’

The track and vines fell into a darkness, lit by a murky moon.

‘You’re overreacting, Ozenna.’ Duarte’s right hand was poised to open the door. His left gripped the leather headrest as he turned to face Rake. ‘This is Douro, not Syria.’

Duarte had met Rake at an airfield near Lisbon, tall and confident in the way of a military officer clinging to past victories. They had driven through Portugal’s dry landscape of red-roofed villages and fields of livestock and crops, and Duarte showed himself to be a man with stories and opinions. He had lectured Rake on many things. Money, which Rake didn’t care much about. Marriage, which Rake had almost done, but not. Portugal, where Rake had never been until today. Duarte told him America needed to learn from Portugal which once had an empire that was now lost. Americans were heading that way, too. He had asked Rake nothing.

The mansion was a modern building with a red sloping roof, a whitewashed flat front and outbuildings on both sides. The left side of its double-fronted door hung open, a light shining from within.

‘Where are the other vehicles?’ asked Rake.

‘They came by bus from their hotel. The driver must have gone off for his dinner.’

‘And the one there?’

‘I don’t know.’ Duarte looked away. ‘I’ve known this family all my life.’

Duarte had given Rake a Glock 19, standard Portuguese police issue with a serial number scrubbed off. He carried a folding knife, which he moved from his pants pocket to his right hand. He tried to get the Mercedes SUV plate through his compact binoculars, but it was smeared with mud.

‘I grew up with them,’ pressed Duarte. ‘Everything is fine. Or they would have called.’

‘We wait,’ said Rake. The meal break and vehicles didn’t ring right. Portuguese and Italians might give drivers a meal break, but not Chinese, Japanese or Koreans. Anyone cutting a deal with North Korea through black money in Macau would be low trust, the type to keep vehicles close by.

‘You wait. You’re so jumpy. I’ll bring him to you.’ Duarte opened his door and got out. Fit and fast for his age, he jogged up the track onto the driveway and had the presence of mind to shine his flashlight into the Mercedes SUV, showing no one inside. He caught his breath on the mansion’s front steps, smoothed down his suit jacket, pushed open the door and walked inside.

Four minutes later, a stocky man, not Jo Duarte, appeared at the front door. He looked Asian, athletic, tough, and wore a green T-shirt with a brand-name logo. Rake focused the binoculars on a transparent plastic sack he was carrying, filled with a jumble of phones and documents. Looking around, he walked across to the driver’s seat of the SUV. He placed a stubby, folding automatic on the ledge on top of the dashboard. He dropped a magazine from a pistol and put in a new one.

‘You go,’ said Rake. The driver looked around sixty and had a weathered, sun-washed face. He met Rake’s gaze in the rear-view mirror. Rake was certain Jo Duarte would not be coming back out of that house and, if the driver stayed, he would most likely end up dead. Rake gave him two hundred-dollar notes. The driver understood. He flipped a switch ensuring the internal light stayed dark when Rake opened the door. The car was a hybrid. He reversed on the battery with no lights and no engine noise. Rake moved through the vines toward the house and found cover with a garden hedge that formed the boundary of the carriage driveway. He lay flat on damp, irrigated grass with a view to the front of the house. The night air carried a freshness and silence.

The entrance hall light went off. Lamps from the driveway were enough for Rake to be able to make out a second Asian-looking man, tall and more formally dressed in a dark suit, pale yellow shirt, no tie. His eyes swept the landscape. He carried a greater sense of urgency. In his right hand was a pistol with a suppressor attached, which would account for Rake not hearing any shots. He brought the weapon up again, ready for use, reached the SUV within seconds and quickly got inside. The SUV’s headlamps stayed off. Its tires crunched gravel stones as it turned. Rake played through scenarios in which he could stop the two men. None came to mind. They were better armed. There were two of them. They were trained. He watched the taillights fade into winter mist down the track. Rake matched the face of the second man to many images he had studied over the months. There was no mistake. This was Michio Kato, the man he was hunting.

Rake fired up his satellite phone, the military one, separate from his encrypted cell phone. He didn’t know what he would find inside the mansion. He had been on enough assignments that had gone rotten to sense it wouldn’t be good. He needed Harry Lucas, who was running the operation from Washington, DC, to secure resources to investigate, keep it quiet and get Rake out of the country. He sent Lucas a message, broke his cover and ran across to the mansion.

The large entrance hall had light wood flooring and a high ceiling stretching up three floors. Jo Duarte had been shot just inside the front door, and was collapsed forward as if praying. Rake found others in a reception room which led on from the hall, with a thick blue carpet, rugs patterned with birds and flowers, and oil portraits of the family owners and the Portuguese landscape.

It was impossible to tell how a person would fall when lethally hit by a bullet. Disruption of blood flow, vital organs shutting down, and the brain in its last throes, jerked the body around unpredictably. Sometimes there was blood, sometimes barely a trace. Sometimes, dignity. Sometimes stripped of it. Sometimes, no expression. Sometimes, terror such as never experienced before.

Rake counted the bodies. Three males looked southern European, dark suits, colorful ties, around forty, well-polished city shoes. One female, dark hair, black heeled shoes, one torn half off her right foot in the fall. Another man looked more north European Caucasian, older, around fifty, could be Russian. Four were Asian. A male and a female were formally dressed, wearing pastel pandemic masks. There was a bodyguard whose weapon was buckled into his shoulder holster, a Chinese standard-issue military QSZ-92. Rake left it there. Another younger male, around thirty, expensive pants, shirt, and trainers. He would be the North Korean Rake had on file. He recognized the two Japanese. One was the businessman he had come up here to meet.

The smell of gunshot hung in the air with the smell of blood. With surprise on their side, Kato and his colleague could have eliminated all in seconds. There were no identity documents. They and the victims’ phones would be in the plastic sack now in the SUV. Rake used his phone to photograph faces. Two rooms branched off. To the left was a kitchen, empty, untouched. To the right, a more lived-in rumpus room, where he found three more. A woman in her mid-thirties, barefoot, red T-shirt, blue denim jeans, looked more a nanny than a mother. A boy with tousled blond hair, around ten, and a dark-haired girl of maybe five or six.

The woman had died first, sitting on a blue and yellow sofa, two shots, chest and head, like the others. Something gave the children time to start running, hands clasped, managing to get a few feet toward an outside door before being hit by two bullets each, head and back. Even with such sudden, intense trauma to the body, until their last breaths they had had the presence of mind to keep holding onto each other. The brain was like that sometimes.

The killings were not about a vineyard deal. It was something more lethal that needed Michio Kato’s personal hand. A message of cold cruelty. About status. A challenge. A warning.

There were no surveillance cameras. It wasn’t that type of mansion. Like Jo Duarte had kept saying, people trusted each other in this community. Outside, Rake sent his phone photographs of the massacre to Harry Lucas, who replied straight back that a team was in place to extract him from Portugal.

Rake walked down through the vines, keeping off the track. Killing to send a message was more brutal and absolute than killing to get something done. Which was why the children had to die. To have spared them would have shown a weakness. Rake covered five miles down the hillside against a hard, night wind coming cold off the river. Low gray clouds created a darkness that gave him cover. Two black sedans sped up toward the house. Not far behind followed larger vans, also black. A message came through on Rake’s phone with the plate number of a vehicle that would drive him to Porto Airport where a plane would fly him out. Rain began to spit, feeling cold on his face.

‘Kato?’ Rake asked.

‘Negative,’ replied Lucas. ‘He’s gone.’

TWO

Washington, DC

Rake Ozenna was safely out of Portugal where he had stumbled upon a bloodbath. A string of tiny lamps flickered back and forth on the top of a screen as Harry Lucas’s facial recognition software worked its way through the images Ozenna had sent through. Michio Kato, one step ahead of them, had killed the conduit they planned to put into play to get inside his network. Not only that. By murdering everyone else at the gathering, he had made a point to all crime operations everywhere. Don’t mess with the Kato family.

Harry ran a private security company which had enjoyed the trust of the White House through three previous administrations. Now, a new President had moved in, and Harry wasn’t so sure. He had not been receiving the positive signals that usually came with the change of administration.

His head office was in Crystal City, five miles to the south, close to the Pentagon and at the heart of the defense and security industries. His home, if anyone could call it that, was this ground-floor apartment close to Dupont Circle in central DC. It had four spacious, high-ceilinged rooms and a secure basement car park. The furniture gave it the look of a hotel lobby, and the bedroom was decked out like a five-star resort. The place was a bachelor pad, business-like, nothing personal, which summed Lucas up at this stage of his life. The personal could wait yet again.

Harry’s concentration shifted to his automatic number plate surveillance keeping vigil on the road outside his apartment. It flagged a vehicle of interest. A black Lincoln Town Car pulled up and, once the passenger was on the sidewalk, Harry recognized National Security Adviser, Nick Petrovsky. Harry had thought best to pre-empt any fallout from Portugal by alerting the National Security Council. What he had not anticipated was a five in the morning personal visit from its boss.

Harry opened the door before a Secret Service agent could press the bell and said, ‘Is it just you, Nick? Or your security, too?’

The question caught Petrovsky by surprise. He had only been in the job a month, unfamiliar with how a White House security cordon worked.

‘Better just you and me,’ added Harry. ‘They know I’m DV.’ DV or developed vetting was the highest form of security clearance. Petrovsky nodded. Lucas asked the two agents, ‘You guys want coffee or something?’ They shook their heads and stepped back

The National Security Adviser looked around curiously as Lucas showed him in. There were a couple of black leather sofas and matching comfy chairs on one side of the living area and a small round, glass table with three upright chairs in another. An arch led through to the kitchen, from which came a smell of old coffee and microwaved pasta left over from before the Portugal crisis broke.

Petrovsky was tall, fit, slightly overweight and scruffy, his gray suit creased, blue shirt crumpled and untucked around the waistband.

‘We met during that—’ began Petrovsky.

‘Yeah. Baghdad.’ Harry wondered why Petrovsky needed to remind him. Petrovsky had been CIA, Lucas US Marine Corps. As they had crossed the apron at Baghdad Airport, Lucas had recognized the whine and sudden silence that came before a mortar strike. He threw Petrovsky to the ground and covered him with his own body.

‘You saved my ass.’

‘We saved each other’s.’ Harry rested a hand on the back of a chair. ‘It’s five in the morning, Nick. We’re both awake because stuff’s going on. I gave you a heads-up on what went down in Portugal and Ozenna is out and on his way back.’

‘No doubt very angry.’

‘Ozenna doesn’t do anger and he left no US government footprint. Nothing for the President’s morning brief. So why the visit?’

Petrovsky drew a short breath. ‘Your privilege of working alone has ended.’ That explained the friendly preface of the Baghdad meeting. Petrovsky carried the drawn look of a man who had been up through the night and was instructed to deliver unwelcome news to a man who had saved his life.

‘Meaning what?’ Harry kept his tone relaxed and conversational. His job was to track international organized crime networks that posed a threat to the United States and to work outside of mainstream agencies, away from turf fights and blockages. He reported straight to the White House, either the National Security Adviser, the Chief of Staff, or the President directly. Harry had heard whispers about President John Freeman moving against him. But the inauguration was barely a week gone, and he thought he was too far down the food chain for anything to happen so soon.

‘The President is shutting you down,’ answered Petrovsky. ‘And, before you ask, his decision came before tonight’s slaughter-fest.’

Harry stayed courteous. ‘Who’s taking the Kato case?’

‘Hasn’t been decided.’

‘Except it’s ongoing and tonight is evidence of exactly how dangerous Michio Kato is.’

‘Our view is that this has nothing to do with the US government.’ Petrovsky’s skin was pasty, his eyes tired.

Harry tried again, ‘Government agencies work in a jungle of silos. Our bit of it, Security, Defense, Intelligence, are silos ringed by moats, walls and razor wire. Everyone protecting turf. That’s why I’ve been hired.’

‘Was hired, Harry. I gave you the courtesy of telling you face to face because you did save my butt in Iraq.’

‘Is this your call, Nick, or the President’s?’

‘His.’

‘Leant on by Pentagon, CIA.’

‘I guess.’

‘Does he know what we do?’

‘He’s got the brief, I guess.’

‘Do you?’

‘Same brief.’

‘Then I’ll fill you in.’ Harry gave a stern smile. ‘I investigate transnational crime networks which pose an extreme threat. The mission came from an incident a few years back that we only just managed to prevent.’

‘I read that, but we don’t regard Japan as a threat.’

Then neither the President nor Petrovsky had read it properly. ‘Presidential Executive Order 13581, clear as daylight, weakening democratic institutions, degrading the rule of law, and undermining economic markets—’

‘That’s yesterday’s world, Harry. Take it on the chin. Everyone’s moved on.’ Petrovsky took a couple of steps toward the door.

‘No, Nick. It’s today’s world. Yakuza is named. This is the umbrella of Japan’s criminal networks.’ His body tightened to suppress rising frustration. ‘In Russia, China and North Korea, crime networks are extensions of governments hostile to the United States.’

‘That’s not Japan.’

‘Wrong. It is Japan. To survive, Japanese Yakuza need to strengthen links with their Asian neighbors.’

Petrovsky shook his head. ‘Japan is our closest ally, the bedrock of our dominance in the Indo-Pacific.’

‘With weak laws against organized crime. It’s exposed. Networks there are working closely with other Asian networks and all of them, Russia, China, Japan operate close to the heart of government. Last night in Portugal we saw what—’

‘The kind of killing a Latin American cartel does every day of the week.’

Harry did not hide his exasperation. ‘Japan is even more of a threat because our guard is down. It’s not rocket science.’

‘It’s bullshit, and the President has called it out.’

Harry stepped around the furniture, so he was closer to Petrovsky, face to face. Petrovsky stiffened and took a step back. Harry spoke quietly, with a rock-hard edge. ‘Michio Kato did what he did last night because he has no fear of consequences. We’re mid-mission in getting him. We cannot afford to stop now while the case gets lost in some inter-agency spat. You know that, Nick. You are the National Security Adviser. So, do your job and advise.’

His words came out more irritated than he wanted, which Petrovsky exploited. ‘You sound tired, Harry. That aggressive streak has let you down before and doesn’t help your case now.’

Harry’s record in the Iraq war had won him medals and propelled him into a flash moment of hero fame. His combat-streaked face became a